The Capitol Building Awaits Trump’s Inauguration: January 18, 2017 (Geoff Livingston/Flickr) At the close of 2016, there was consensus, at least among half of Americans, that the last 365 days mirrored hellfire. Hatred and anger were intertwined with our political culture more than ever. It became near impossible to detach politics from our national dialogue. An…

Following the annual Celebration of Leadership Assembly, the Academy Life Editorial Board met with J.D. Vance to discuss his experiences outlined in his book, “Hillbilly Elegy.” A condensed version of the interview lightly edited for clarity and grammar appears below. Photo by Inji Kang’19.  Click HERE to view Vance’s “TED Talk.”  On “survivor’s guilt”:  I…

 (Creative Commons) “Girls, I hope you know what message you’re putting out there,” said Mrs. Williamson, costume designer for Academy’s theater department, after the final rehearsal of A Voice In The Dark. “With everything that’s happening right now in the media, I hope that people see this as encouragement to speak up before it’s too…

The city of this weekend’s tragedy. (Thomas Hawk/Flickr)  The following letter is in response to the Las Vegas attacks. Georgia Tuckerman has sent this to her representatives: Beatty, Brown, and Portman. Dear Representatives,  I took a foreign relations course the summer before my junior year with students from all over the world. The international students…

The statue at the center of the controversy. (Courtesy/ Wikimedia Commons.) A century and a half after Civil War’s end, parts of the U.S. are still stuck in the 1860s. Statues of Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson litter the South, and an attempt to remove similar symbols of the Confederacy sparked an unforeseen…

It seemed like a match made in heaven: the sloppy media courts the careless billionaire. They fight publicly, but we all know that both sides benefit from these quarrels. The media regains a once-scattering crowd of adorers, and the man on the campaign trail gets all of the free publicity he wants. A symbiotic (if…

Latern Festival in Shanghai, China Every year, lasting for 15 days and starting from the first day of the lunar calendar (around the end of January or the beginning of February), people from countries all over the world celebrate Chinese New Year. 2017 is the Year of the Rooster, and it begins on January 28.…